How to Find Buying Keywords

How to Find Buying Keywords

As common knowledge goes, having the right keywords in advance of building your site is crucial. In fact, selecting the right keywords is probably 2nd – only to choosing the right niche. Considering that a ton of time and effort may well be wasted if you don’t get this part of the process right from the start. Yes, it’s been said a thousand times before … and it’s also why you see an ocean of forum posts and infamous WSO’s recommending the absolute necessity of 2 things: HIGH search volume and LOW competition.

Of course, everyone is giving advice on which stats to look for when drilling down keywords.

Yet, choosing them purely based on this method of high volume/low comp. determines strictly by numbers and percentage what is considered good and what is bad. What about the intent of the buyer? Rarely do we see the sort of intuitive advice about the actual keyword terms themselves and information as to what makes a good ‘buying’ keyword.

TIP: Using the Google Insights tool in conjunction with the Google Keyword External Tool can be quite effective for initial research.

With that said, I’ll let you in on my recent experience and how this post came to be. I recently put together a new batch of campaigns. The issue that tends to come up for many is that it can be quite difficult to find ENOUGH keywords to hit that sweet spot – that would be the “high traffic, low competition” criteria.

And, even when you do, you might get a lot of traffic, but if they don’t convert to sales very well you are either forced to tweak your sites and landing pages, or back to the drawing board. That can mean all your time and energy (and possibly your hard earned money) going into a whole campaign which may go absolutely nowhere, but the catch 22? You have to test things out to know if you’ve got a winner … bottom line.

Unless you are flat out paying for a successful website and having it handed to you on a silver platter, then you must learn to avoid choosing campaigns that are based on numbers alone. The phrase ‘numbers don’t lie’ is true, but it all depends on the type of niche you’re targeting (ie., seasonal, passing trend, evergreen, etc.)

In the past few months, I’ve been focusing the majority of my research into determining the real-world viability of a phrase being a ‘buying’ phrase. It’s the most crucial step for determining whether or not that site you’re going to build (or have built) will be a long-term keeper in your portfolio.

For anyone who want an example on how to find buying keywords:

Try to use a product name or just use a general keyword / niche phrase. Use your imagination, common sense, interests, interests of those around you, the media, combine them with regular keyword research techniques.

Secondly, combine whatever you just came up with, along with your ‘buying keyword’ as shown below…

Even just a little traffic with those keywords could convert traffic into customers. The more targeted the niche the less customers you would need to turn a profit.

To ward off the concerns of “high traffic, low competition” being the only way to success, it’s important to note that the competition can be JUST as high as utilizing average keywords.The alternative, in that case, is to simply turn them into long-tail keywords. Below are some examples of phrases that can be added to your buying keywords to make them ‘long-tail’:

where should I
where would I
where could I
where can I
where to
where
how should I
how would I
how could I
how can I
how to
how
who makes
who sales
who has
can I
online

One last trick for gathering enough keywords (and make it worth your while)…

Try combining Bing webmaster tools search with the Google keyword tool. Then, using a WordPress plugin many folks are familiar with called ‘WP SEO’, generate the focus keyword. After typing it in, you’ll see a short list of relevant keywords pop up, which are taken from the SERPs. It’s convenient if you’re typically working in the WordPress back-end while creating posts anyway. Simply take a quick screenshot when the list pops up, add them all to a text file for use with future posts and/or tags. Taking the time to gather them is super helpful for creating highly relevant KW groups too.